Mr Selfridge, series 2, episode 1, review

Mr Selfridge works more effectively when it doesn't take itself seriously,
says Gabriel Tate

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Jeremy Piven as Harry SelfridgePhoto: ITV

By Gabriel Tate

10:00PM GMT 19 Jan 2014

Remember Harry Selfridge? The man who opened his shop in 1909 with brio and bonhomie, flinging his arms wide (was Harry an early proponent of ‘hugging it out’?) and flashing those pearly whites? Well, things were a little different by 1914, as we rejoined Jeremy Piven's entrepreneur following a first series of multiplying business worries and self-inflicted marital trauma. At the start of this second series, he had become a brooding, bespectacled introvert, fielding press queries with a frown. These were, he intoned, "uncertain times". But you can’t keep a good grin down: it was the fifth anniversary of the central London department store, which meant throwing a party.

Having said that, Piven did seem to be reining in the razzle-dazzle a little. It was as if someone had actually reminded him that actors require a little directing to produce their best work, and need not try to outperform the spectacular production design. The result was less exhausting and more engaging, even if he still struggled with portraying the heavier end of the emotional range. It wasn’t such a problem with this opener, with Harry’s personal life in the ascendant as his estranged wife Rose returned and his young son pitched into the family business. And the supporting cast was more than capable of picking up the slack: it was a genuine thrill to see stalwarts of the stage such as Samuel West and Tom Goodman-Hill slumming it with such relish. Of the new additions, Aidan McCardle’s unambiguously villainous Lord Loxley and Polly Walker, playing ‘decadent’ nightclub owner and proto-feminist Delphine Day, made a real impression amid the whirl of characters and stories.

Elsewhere, sexual tension abounded – Harry and Mae, Agnes and Victor, Mrs Mardle and Mr Grove. While you couldn’t call all of it unconsummated after the bedhopping of the previous series, you could certainly deem it unresolved. And that’s before the late return of Spiral’s Gregory Fitoussi as Henri Leclair, even dishier now he’s dishevelled and, as seems likely, the proud bearer of "a past".

Mr Selfridge isn’t the sort of production to risk letting its viewers miss the point. Equally, it’s a drama that’s more comfortable the less seriously it takes itself. So it’s unfortunate that last night’s parting shot, in attempting to address one the grimmest narratives of the 20th century, instead provoked giggles with its ostentatious mise en scène: a newspaper strewn in the gutter, headline blaring "Archduke Franz Ferdinand Assassinated" mere seconds after a vendor has been heard shouting the same sentence not once, but twice. Like Downton Abbey, Mr Selfridge’s welcoming arms may do well to embrace the escapism and keep real human tragedy at a safe distance.